I’ve been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over
my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that’s
a job where I don’t think sex plays much part.
ATTRIBUTION: On becoming first woman to conduct Boston Symphony Orchestra,
recalled on her death, International Herald Tribune 23 Oct 79

A great work is
made out of a combination of obedience and liberty.

Loving a child doesn’t
mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best
in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.

Life is denied
by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to
write a masterpiece.
(Virgo Moon square Pluto & Neptune in Gemini.)

Everything we know
by heart enriches us and helps us find ourselves. If it should get in
the way of finding ourselves, it is because we have no personality.

The essential [conditions]
of everything you do … must be choice, love, passion.
(Saturn square Jupiter.)

“Do not take
up music unless you would rather die than not do so”

“The art
of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously
only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and,
at the same time, with a great, affectionate joy.”
(Saturn square Jupiter.)

“Liberty
has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the
subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The
history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power,
not the increase of it.”

The Constitution
of the United States is not a mere lawyers' document; it is a vehicle
of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age.

It is one thing
to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one's own gift.

To study music,
we must learn the rules. To create music, we must forget them.

Attention is the
state of mind which allows us to perceive what has to be

Nadia
Boulanger (September 16, 1887 – October 22, 1979) was an influential
composer, conductor, and music professor. She taught many of the most
important composers and conductors of the 20th century.

Nadia Boulanger's
grandmother was the singer Juliette Boulanger. Her grandfather, Frédérick
Boulanger won first prize in violoncello in his fifth year (1797) at
the recently founded Paris Conservatoire. Her father, Ernest Boulanger,
later studied at the same conservatory (his teachers included Charles-Valentin
Alkan), and won the Prix de Rome in 1835. He later taught there, where
he met Nadia's mother, the Russian Princess, Raissa Myshetskaya.

Nadia Boulanger's
emotional life was largely centered around her love for her sister,
Lili Boulanger, who was six years younger. Lili was one of Nadia's first
composition students, and it was largely under her guidance that Lili
became the first woman ever to win the Prix de Rome, in 1913.

Nadia Boulanger
entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten. It was here that
she studied organ with Alexandre Guilmant and later with Charles-Marie
Widor. She also studied composition with Gabriel Fauré. After
winning first prize in organ, accompaniment, and fugue, she won the
Deuxième Grand Prix de Rome in 1908.

Boulanger, who liked
to be known as 'Mademoiselle', was the first woman to conduct several
major symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the
Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and in England the Hallé
Orchestra of Manchester and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Her first teaching
position was at Alfred Cortot's École Normale de Musique de Paris,
in 1916. After World War I (1921) she was appointed professor of Harmony
at the American Conservatory of Music in Fontainebleau, where she was
discovered by a new generation of American composers [see below.] She
eventually became its director [1950]. She also taught at the Longy
School of Music and the Paris Conservatory.

Many of her students
from the 1920s, including Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Roy Harris,
and Virgil Thomson, established a new school of composition based on
her teaching, and Walter Piston, in addition to his compositions, has
produced three superb textbooks, on Harmony, Counterpoint and Orchestration.
It used to be said that every town in America had its Boulanger pupil.
Her influence was immense throughout most of the Western musical world.

Boulanger's teaching
methods included traditional harmony, score reading at the piano, species
counterpoint, analysis, and mastery of sight singing (using fixed-Do
solfège). Her students were also expected to memorize Bach's
Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2, and to learn to improvise fugues
(as Bach often did). Her range was phenomenal, her ear perfect, her
memory seemingly photographic, and her disciplinary demands absolute.
Her whole character was imbued with passionate dedication, generosity,
and intense love of life.

Here is an incomplete
list of her musical students. Neither Boulanger nor Annette Dieudonné,
her life-long friend and assistant, kept records of those students who
studied with Boulanger. In addition, it is virtually impossible to determine
the exact nature of an individual's private study with Boulanger.

These two sisters
made an extraordinary impact on French musical life, Lili being the
first woman to win the much coveted Prix de Rome, and Nadia becoming
perhaps the most influencial musical teacher of the 20th century.

Nadia entered the
Paris Conservatoire aged ten, and later studied with Faure. Her cantata
La sirene won her second prize in the Prix de Rome in 1908. She was
deeply affected by the death of her sister in 1918, and from 1919 was
no longer active as a composer. She devoted her life to conducting and
teaching; her pupils included Lennox Berkeley, Elliott Carter, Aaron
Copland, Jean Francais, Thea Musgrave and Walter Piston.

Lili's precocious
musical career was guided to begin with by Nadia. Her cantata Faust
et Helene won the Prix de Rome in 1913, after which her achievements
became headline news. Ill from the age of twelve, and fragile for the
rest of her brief life, she composed a surprising amount of music. Above
all her sensitive handling of large choral and orchestral forces continues
to compel admiration.